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The Top 10 Joys of Summer
In no particular order really, because they’re all so wonderful, and summer just wouldn’t be the same without any one of them . . . Rate them however you will!
- Fireflies: Who among has a heart that does not leap at the sight of the summer’s first firefly! (Or even the last.) The nocturnal harbinger of childhood dreams – glass jars teeming with specks of pulsating glory within . . . Finally climbing up and over the rim and rising to freedom. Strange how you never do see them return to the grass.
- River Swimming / Beach Swimming / Lake Swimming / Pool Swimming: I must break these up into categories as each is so uniquely wonderful. River swimming for the heavenly feeling that is propping oneself up in a rapid as the power of the current sweeps and bubbles and wraps itself around you . . . Beach swimming for the waves of course, rising and falling and unpredictable, challenging you to ride them and just being so very, very small in something so very, very big . . . Lake swimming for the mystery that is deep still water and the cool layers below that you’re never quite so comfortable diving into . . . And pool swimming as well – antiseptic compared to all the rest, but nevertheless refreshing and perhaps especially so on an interminably long and hot summer day.
- Tomato Sandwiches with Dukes Mayonnaise (white bread of course): I have written an entire column on this subject. If you too are thinking that this should perhaps be number one, go buy my book (or several of them) and give it a read.
- Bare Feet in Cool Evening Sand: If you’re a wine drinker and you’ve availed yourself of a glass and everyone else is still in the showers cleaning up from the day on the beach and the sun is just slipping down over the marsh and the sand is that fine cool dune sand with a little bit of grey in it, and you can smell the shrimp boiling back in the kitchen - don’t fool yourself, you really are closer to heaven than you might think.
- Bare Feet in Perfect Grass: Similar to above but with a slightly ticklish feeling that just makes you want to run willy-nilly through it, arms outstretched, yelling some really positive phrase like “Life is Really, Really Great!”
- Thunderstorms: This includes power outages and associated quiet and candle lit board games and eating the chips and dip because, “they might go bad.” (Chips?) Also produces gutter leaf racing which is right up there with fireflies and tomato sandwiches when it comes to unbeatable summer memories. I’m sorry but NASCAR has nothing on a close leaf race.
- Cicada Symphonies: I love them. My sister hates them. Guess that’s just the way it is with cicadas. Man, I can be asleep in about 17 seconds when the bugs really have it going on . . . Throw a really loud rogue cricket or two in the mix and you’ve got “Circadian Cicada Beethoven” - the stuff that winter dream are made of.
- Children’s Voices as Twilight Gives Way to Darkness: I must clarify that these are voices that are not so loud or so close that you can even tell what they are saying. But are, rather, more of a combined song, not unlike a chant, that carries far and wide across the summer lawns from a game like “Kick the Can,” subliminally reminding one that life was once, and can occasionally still be, so innocent and true.
- Early Morning Bird Choruses: Another “love – hate” sort of thing. I am an earlier than not riser and thrill each morning to the promise that comes with the birdsong that is so vibrant and optimistic. It’s as if God is cheating a bit by giving us these consistently excited heralds at the break of day. But I have a neighbor who moans that “all that noise” wakes him up. His wife says he slams his windows most mornings. Oh well, can’t win them all.
- Time Standing Still: All those other moments of summer – whether standing at night beneath the super bright glory of the stars while away from city lights (camping or perhaps at the beach) or looking out over the wrinkled distant heat of a farmers field or a long city street – when time just seems to slow and then stop and something of the Holy is known . . . Something real, and comforting and pure. Maybe its just the knowledge that a cool drink of water, like the very coming of God’s Grace, is just another breath or two away . . . Or maybe its something else – a sweet “whisper from the wings” reminding us that everything ultimately must add up to something so much more than we’re generally willing to fathom in the everyday of our lives.
Whatever it is, I love you fresh, green summer . . . Sweet and silent balm to elder and passionate inspiration to youth . . . Stretch long now before me and pull me fully down your path.
- Stuart